Original subtitles

Ancient Rome -

heart of a powerful empire...

..and home to a monument to blood and brutality...

..the Colosseum.

The Colosseum is the largest amphitheatre ever built

in the Roman world.

The most famous, the most impressive monument

in the ancient city of Rome.

For over 400 years

it reflected the supreme might of the Roman Empire.

We get a sense of incredible engineering,

incredible architecture,

and, of course, what took place here

is something that still leaves us in awe.

Built to amaze

but also to entertain, educate and control.

Rome had to find a way to keep hold of power,

and, whilst the games entertained the crowds,

it sent a message to those who would cross Rome -

"This is what happens to you."

Argh!

Now, as archaeology uncovers hidden layers of the monument,

revealing its former glory,

further research into amphitheatres across the Roman world

and their blood-soaked spectacles

sheds light on long-held myths about the Colosseum and the games.

It was just overwhelming how many injuries we found.

What are the origins of the Colosseum?

What was the purpose of these barbaric spectacles?

And why did the Romans go to such lengths

to put on such a show?

It's in many ways

one of the most political buildings of the city of Rome

and arguably of the Roman Empire as a whole.

The year is 80 CE.

50,000 Romans take their places

to witness the first games held in the brand-new Colosseum...

..a lavish spectacle of death and drama

on a scale never seen before.

Trained hunters, known as 'venators',

slaughter exotic animals from across the empire.

Criminals are forced to act out ancient myths before their execution.

And the highlight?

Gladiator fights.

Hundreds of them.

What you see inside the games

is a microcosm of the reality of the world order.

Rome is in charge.

The emperor is in charge.

In 80 CE

the emperor ruled over a realm that spread from North Africa to Germany,

from the north of England to Syria.

Over 40 million people. 5 million square kilometres.

Those first games matched the empire's scale and scope...

..distilled into 3,000 square metres of arena floor.

This is the epicentre of the entire Roman Empire under the emperors.

But the Colosseum wasn't the first amphitheatre in Rome.

In a more ancient part of the city,

just half a kilometre from the Colosseum...

..historian and archaeologist Darius Arya

finds evidence of an earlier structure...

..the Forum,

over 2,500 years old.

This is where everyone's gathering, trading, selling.

The pulse of the city is right here.

But, as well as the public market,

Darius believes this space was also used for entertainment.

We have ancient sources telling us it was the tradition,

maybe as early as the 3rd century BC,

definitely in the 2nd century BC,

that this was the location, in this piazza,

that the major gladiatorial games were performed.

This was where the first venue for gladiator fights was built in Rome,

a temporary amphitheatre.

Originally the seating is made of wood,

temporarily erected around this Forum space

on the occasion of the gladiatorial games,

and then dismantled,

and then business as usual in the Forum.

Nothing remains of the temporary seating,

but there are still clues to be found that reveal the shape of the arena.

The ancient marketplace, or piazza,

was paved in the early 1st century.

Beneath this paving, Darius spots traces of older structures.

I can see the pavers of the imperial period

that are still present,

except for right here.

So, they've been removed,

and what's been revealed is this very, very deep shaft.

Oh, yeah, that's really deep.

Here's another one of these shafts

that's in the central area of the Forum piazza.

12 shafts stretch across the Forum,

evidence the amphitheatre included a complex underground infrastructure.

But who built them?

And what were they for?

Archaeological evidence and studies

suggest that these shafts are actually put in

by none other than Julius Caesar,

who is celebrating his triumph in 46 BC.

The shafts are part of an elaborate system

to move animals and gladiators into position

before releasing them onto the amphitheatre floor...

..a forerunner of the maze of tunnels and lifts

found under the Colosseum today.

But Darius believes

the Colosseum inherits more than just this arena's subterranean labyrinth.

What gives shape to this construction in the 2nd century BC

will be two basilicas...

..the Basilica Aemelia, the Basilica Giulia,

always giving this framework to the central piazza.

The only space for an arena sat between these two basilicas.

A circular structure can't include all 12 shafts.

A rectangle could enclose the shafts,

but creates blind spots for the crowd.

The space that includes all the shafts

and gives the best view for the audience

is an oval.

This then is the inspiration for the final permanent construction

of the venues we call amphitheatres.

The Forum's temporary wooden amphitheatre

was the first of its kind,

and it was oval in shape.

It's a distinct architectural construction

that was created by the Romans

for their unique games of gladiators.

Almost four centuries later

the Romans achieved the pinnacle of amphitheatre construction -

the Colosseum.

But, unlike the amphitheatre in the Forum,

this one was built to last, set in stone, not wood,

and a place where Romans could enjoy that most Roman of entertainment...

..gladiator fights.

Gladiators are central to our story.

Public entertainment in Rome,

they are central to the story of the Colosseum.

Very successful performances, people came in droves.

So, there was something

fundamentally attractive, fundamentally enthusing about shows

that we, from our own modern point of view,

regard as gory and problematic in so many ways.

But our job is to try and understand

why these shows were so meaningful to so many people.

So, how did the gladiator games originate?

To investigate, Darius Arya has come to Paestum in southern Italy.

This is a fascinating site, originally a Greek colony

that, with the passing of time,

is going to be overtaken by the Lucanians -

indigenous Italian peoples here in Campania -

and the city continues to thrive.

Archaeologists have discovered a series of painted frescoes

inside ancient Lucanian tombs...

..now carefully preserved in climate-controlled rooms.

They are almost 200 years older

than the wooden amphitheatre in Rome's Forum.

Here we have the interior of a Lucanian tomb,

and we see two major scenes.

It looks like almost two guys at war,

but the context can't be war.

You have these festoons dividing the scenes.

This is a scene of entertainment, of some sort of spectacle.

Here these guys are boxing.

Over here we have

what look like to be warriors.

They've got helmets and shields and they've got their long lances,

and they're literally killing themselves,

because this one's going right into this guy's face.

This is incredible violence.

These men are not gladiators

but slaves.

At funerary games

slaves would fight to the death to honour the recently departed.

And the blood goes down to the gods of the underworld.

It's a great offering.

These Lucanian frescoes

are evidence that this most Roman of traditions - gladiator fights -

is not even Roman.

So, how did Rome take a religious tradition

and turn it into mass entertainment?

When these frescoes are painted, Rome is a small city-state.

The Etruscans sit to the north,

the Lucanians and Samnites to the south.

All but Rome hold funerary games.

Then in the 4th century BCE

Rome looks to expand, and takes on her neighbours.

Ultimately, Rome is the victor.

By 264 BCE

in Rome we have these games being performed.

So, where is it coming from?

It's coming from the people that they're interacting with,

they're going to war with and ultimately absorbing ideas from.

Over time, as Rome becomes dominant,

it also absorbs its enemies' traditions,

such as fights to the death.

Thinking about that original context,

when you have the gladiatorial games first documented in Rome,

it's in a funerary context.

Rich Roman families would organise funerary games for the deceased...

Combatti!

..initially private religious occasions.

But, as their popularity increased,

they were recast as events for the masses,

but with a twist.

These new public games would send a clear message,

more than simple entertainment or offerings to appease the gods.

They were an expression of power.

When you look at gladiatorial armour,

it's very over-the-top.

It's not functional, it's aesthetic,

it's pageantry because it's a show.

Historian Alexander Mariotti is an expert in gladiatorial combat.

He believes early gladiatorial contests

are a show of Rome's military power.

There was very many different styles of gladiator.

The reasoning for this is that they didn't originate on the arena,

they originated on the battlefield.

This ornate armour has an origin,

and that origin is a group of people called the Samnites.

The Samnites were incredibly fierce people

and they had a reputation for being absolutely ferocious.

The Romans fought against the Samnites,

and, having defeated them,

they found themselves with two resources...

..a whole bunch of prisoners of war

and a whole bunch of very fancy armour they're never going to use.

So, what did they do?

They decided to humiliate the Samnites

by making them fight to the death in their own armour.

And this is why the first type of gladiator was, in fact, the Samnite.

Argh!

In the 3rd century BCE

Rome's military aggression continues.

Over the course of 95 years

it conquers the Italian peninsula,

the Carthaginians in Sicily,

Hispania in the west,

the Balkans in the east,

and then Greece and Turkey.

A hundred years later

Rome ruled around 45 million people.

Rome had to find a way to keep hold of power,

and there was nothing better than forming an example.

So, whenever a defeated nation crossed the Romans, faced defeat,

their further defeat was humiliation,

and that was in the arena.

And, so they would show their enemies

fighting for nothing more than entertainment and pleasure.

And, whilst it entertained the crowds,

it sent a message to those who would cross Rome -

"This is what happens to you."

With outfits and weapons inspired by defeated enemies,

gladiators were visual evidence of Roman supremacy.

And, in a society where violence was commonplace,

the crowds loved the bloodletting.

We're looking at a society

where many people will have had direct experience of warfare,

and an attractive explanation

for the success of these displays of violence

is that those performances

provided the city-dwelling audience of Rome

with a heavily controlled representation of violence.

When the Colosseum was built

it became a showcase for the empire's staggering military might.

But how did such a temple to violence come to be here,

in the heart of Rome?

At the Colosseum

a bold new excavation project is underway.

Lead archaeologist, Federica Rinaldi, runs the team.

An earthquake in the 14th century

brought down part of the Colosseum's outer corridors and walls.

The archaeologists are digging where these structures once stood,

into their very foundations.

Here they come across a complex network of drains lined with bricks.

Rufi? Rufi.

OK.

The Romans stamped their bricks

so that each factory could be held accountable

for the quality of its products.

It's proof that the Colosseum foundations

were built in the reign of Vespasian, the ninth emperor of Rome.

So, why did he decide to build the Colosseum and build it here?

Vespasian takes the throne in 69 CE.

He faces a huge problem.

The previous emperor, Nero, left an empire at war with itself.

Just metres from the Forum

he built himself a huge palatial complex -

the Domus Aurea, meaning the 'Golden House'.

The very construction of that palace

had led to the eviction of thousands of people

from, really, a central site in the city of Rome.

So, it is a monument of despotism,

it is a monument of extravagance and imperial corruption.

And Nero didn't stop there.

Alongside his grand estate

he built a huge statue of himself 30 metres tall

known as the Colossus.

So, we're talking about a megalomaniac,

we're talking about a person that wants to leave his mark in the city.

After Nero's death

Rome fell into a year-long civil war.

In the political fallout, there's a lot of bloodshed,

there's a lot of uncertainty,

and from that competition, that Game Of Thrones experience,

there's one man that remains standing.

His name was Vespasian.

Vespasian was not of royal blood, but a military man...

..a general.

His first challenge -

building the relationship with his people.

So, what does he do?

In place of Nero's vanity project...

..Vespasian builds the Colosseum.

It is a savvy political gesture

to erase Nero's legacy

and establish his own dynasty...

..the Flavians.

The amphitheatre was central to the political program of Vespasian.

It was, first and foremost,

a major statement of the fact that he was the new guy in charge.

In building the Colosseum,

Vespasian hopes to create a bond with the people of Rome

and to restore order to society.

The question is does it work?

Much of the Colosseum has collapsed.

It's difficult to understand its internal structure.

But the amphitheatre in Pompeii is better preserved.

This is the first stone amphitheatre ever built,

150 years older than the Colosseum.

It could provide important clues.

Darius Arya has studied the remains in detail.

We have some corridors

that lead you directly to the best seats in the house,

the ringside seats.

And then we have external staircases

all around here,

and that's going to take you to the higher located seats.

The stadium was designed to maintain strict segregation of social classes.

What we see is that there's a rigid categorisation of people.

You literally have a blueprint of how society works.

The most important people have the best seats,

are closest to the action.

And, as you make your way up into the nosebleed seats,

well, you're less and less important,

reminding YOU of YOUR place in that Roman society.

Classical historian Shushma Malik has spotted clues

suggesting the same was true at the Colosseum.

When we think about the seating arrangements,

the different levels are made from different materials.

So, at the bottom

we've got more brick and solid stone.

But as we work our way up to the top

the materials become wooden,

so, less comfortable, less secure.

This represents the difference

in who's sitting in the different places in the Colosseum.

The architecture of the Colosseum reinforces this difference.

On the ground floor

huge corridors nine metres tall

display exquisite reliefs.

The top-floor arcades are smaller and left plain.

At the bottom we've got the elite,

so, we're talking about senators and equestrians,

who were the richest people in society.

And then, as we go further up,

in our next layer we've got male citizens.

And then as we go further up

you have the other category of society,

which is the rest, essentially,

so, non-citizens, the enslaved and women.

Everyone in the crowd knew their place.

We're looking really at a space

that restates the political and social order

and that, on the one hand,

gives people plenty of entertainment and plenty of fun,

but also gives the people in charge, the men in charge,

the opportunity to control very closely who's doing what and where.

The Colosseum was physical evidence of Rome's social order.

Its architecture enforced it.

By 80 CE, after only eight years,

the grand construction was finished.

The first games could begin.

108 arcades stood here

stacked on top of each other

over three floors

almost 40 metres into the air.

On the ground floor

corridors for the exclusive use of senators and senior politicians

led to ringside seats...

..while the public followed a network of staircases and corridors

that took them to seats determined by status...

..and at the centre of the auditorium -

the emperor and his entourage...

..there to be entertained by gladiators

brought from across the empire...

..and wild animals transported from its remotest corners.

The glory and wealth of the empire

was represented in the arena and in the new monument itself.

But were these first games a success for the emperor?

We have a new venue that, in terms of magnitude, complexity,

sheer might,

offers completely new opportunities.

The emperor uses the Colosseum, the Flavian amphitheatre,

as the prime entertainment venue in the city of Rome.

And that venue isn't just crucial to the city of Rome,

it becomes in many ways an icon of imperial power

that resonates way beyond the confines of the city.

But that emperor isn't Vespasian.

Vespasian had a very distinguished career as emperor.

He transforms the city,

building the first public amphitheatre on such a grand scale.

Unfortunately for him, he didn't live to see its completion.

Vespasian achieves something very remarkable.

He dies in his own bed -

never a mean feat for a Roman emperor.

Titus succeeds his father. HE gets the glory of celebrating the games.

It was in many ways his big day.

He was, by inaugurating the Amphitheatre as it was then known,

announcing, advertising, stating the beginning of a new era,

of a new golden era.

To top it all off,

we have the sources that say

that Titus visibly wept on the last day of the games,

lamenting the fact that he'd never be able to top this.

These games were the most lavish Rome had ever seen.

The Colosseum solidified

the legitimacy of the Flavian dynasty...

..and presented the might of the Roman Empire to the world.

The empire, in its sheer diversity,

in its exotic, mesmerising quality,

comes to town,

and it comes to town first and foremost at the Colosseum,

at the amphitheatre built by the Flavian emperors,

Vespasian and Titus.

From the start it was a success.

A regular supply of bloody entertainment

would win the emperor's dynasty the love of the Roman mob.

In scale, the Colosseum would never be rivalled.

But, as Rome expanded,

versions of it were built across the empire.

Over 700 kilometres from Rome,

close to the ancient city of Carthage,

is El Jem in modern-day Tunisia.

In the heart of the town

another amphitheatre,

clearly modelled on the Colosseum.

But how and why was such a statement structure built out here

on the edge of the empire?

Professor Nejib Ben Lazreg

has been excavating Roman sites in Tunisia for almost 50 years.

We are in the Amphitheatre of El Jem,

the biggest Roman monument left in all North Africa.

The Romans had conquered this region in the 2nd century BCE.

Its people, once Rome's bitter enemies,

now filled the stands.

Imagine, on the opening day,

30,000 people cheering and trampling,

all the atmosphere.

The people went mad.

Nejib surveys the building's architectural features.

In the lattice of stone arches

he finds strange markings carved into the blocks.

In the rough structures

one can find clues

that help to decipher the way these technicians built their structures.

You have to be like a detective. You have to understand these marks.

They hooked these stones from either side for the block with ropes

and lifted.

And this made the construction very quick and easy.

But this is Roman, you know. No doubt about that.

The triangular marks are notes left by the builders,

enabling them to lift the stones with cranes

and signalling which way up the blocks should be placed

like a set of instructions.

This shows how the Roman engineering spread throughout the empire.

People don't think about it.

It's a small hole, but it summarises a big empire.

This Roman building technique

allowed amphitheatres as grand as the one at El Jem

to be erected in the most quick and efficient way possible.

But, while the notches explain how these amphitheatres were built,

they don't reveal why.

Using the Colosseum as a blueprint,

by the end of the 2nd century

more than 200 stone amphitheatres were constructed across the empire,

right up to the very borders.

During the time there were no mass media,

so the amphitheatre WAS the mass media.

It spread the Roman values in all the empire.

This was what cemented the Roman Empire.

Amphitheatres were a political project.

They shone as beacons of Roman civilisation across conquered lands.

Popular culture tells of extravagant spectacles

that mirrored the greatness of the empire.

But what was the real scale of the games?

Clues have been found

in the new archaeological dig at the Colosseum.

Archaeologist Federica Rinaldi

and her site manager, Maria Rosaria,

examine artefacts found in a series of channels dug into the foundations.

Si. Si.

Hundreds more animal bones have been found under the Colosseum

in the southern sewer collector in 2022,

the largest collection ever recovered here.

Were these finds once fighting animals

or lunch for the attending crowds?

At the Sapienza University of Rome

zoo archaeologist Claudia Minniti carries out further research.

Coins and pottery found alongside

date these bones to the Roman period.

Cleaning them reveals details that can identify the animals.

Carnivores usually have sharp teeth for cutting and tearing meat...

..whereas herbivores' teeth are flat.

It's one of dozens of bones and skulls identified as bear remains.

It can only mean one thing.

Other skulls belong to everyday animals...

..horses and dogs.

It's likely some of them also took part in the spectacles.

But Claudia hones in on a more unusual find.

The radius is a bone found in the front legs of animals.

To identify which species,

Claudia compares the size of these bones

to those of big cats living today.

Lions were caught and shipped from North Africa and the Near East,

over 2,000 kilometres away from Rome.

But this collection of bones

reveals lions weren't the only exotic animals used in the Colosseum.

These animals from far-flung corners of the empire

left the crowds in no doubt of Rome's dominion over the known world.

And the bones provide more clues as to what went on in the arena.

The animals in the arena were chased down by professional hunters,

known in Latin as 'venators'.

They specialised in fighting dangerous animals,

including lions, bears and leopards.

These hundreds of bone remains

give a sense of the scale of the spectacles in the Colosseum.

From the very beginning

no expense was spared to provide entertainment for the masses.

And the spectacle...

..didn't stop there.

Palaeobotanist Alessandra Celant is analysing further finds

from remains recently found under the Colosseum floor.

Using a method called 'water separation',

Alessandra can distinguish between sediment, which is heavier,

and organic matter, which floats to the surface...

..and can then be identified.

The pattern of the veins and the shape of the cells in the leaf sample

act like a fingerprint.

Laurel was highly prized by the Romans,

in food, for the crowns of the emperors,

and as a gift to winning gladiators.

But Alessandra has found clues

that the laurel found here had a different use.

It's a discovery that could transform

our understanding of how fights were staged.

These are the remains of laurel branches.

While animals like leopards and lions

paraded and hunted in a forest setting,

Alessandra's investigation

has also identified pollen from evergreen and deciduous oaks.

She believes they were also used in the spectacles.

The Romans didn't just bring exotic animals to the Colosseum

but also a sense of theatre.

But ancient writers suggest

the inaugural games included another spectacle

even more extraordinary

that showcased the empire's

political, financial and military might.

A show that would stretch Roman ingenuity to the limit.

In the heart of Rome

Darius Arya examines ancient texts

that describe the first games of this brand-new amphitheatre.

Take a look at this -

"For Titus suddenly filled this same theatre with water,

"and he brought in people on ships

"who engaged in a sea fight there."

We're talking about ship battles in the Colosseum.

This passage from Roman historian Cassius Dio

was written over a hundred years after the inaugural games.

He never witnessed the event himself.

Naval battles had been acted out before on artificial lakes.

Could they really be staged in an amphitheatre?

We're talking about flooding the largest arena in the ancient world.

It would have been a Herculean task to carry something like this out.

So, how did they manage to do this?

It would take extraordinary skill to build such a system.

A recent engineering investigation into the Colosseum

reveals a possible mechanism.

Researchers suggest large ducts that run around the circumference

fed into shallow channels that could have filled the arena.

Calculations based on their capacity

proved that the arena could have then been drained in just a few hours.

This sounds like an incredible challenge,

but the Romans were masters in engineering

and the manipulation of water.

Despite the shortage of archaeological remains,

the network of channels and the contemporary texts

suggest that naval reenactments at Titus's inaugural games

may well have been a reality.

Just imagine it - now you have this huge arena of the Colosseum

flooded with water, filled with ships manned by sailors,

with these ships ramming into each other

and the sailors fighting each other to the death.

This is the kind of experience

that would have made the Colosseum legendary.

The extravagance of the Colosseum games

would echo across distant lands,

a reflection of the empire's power and reach.

And, as Rome's dominion expanded to its greatest extent,

this great amphitheatre, its cousins and their gladiators

would become key tools of control.

But, such was the Colosseum's importance,

its very success would even play a role in the empire's downfall.